Sultry Summer Characters

So here we are, well into summer here in the states with July moving on fast. I love the summer months and wish I could draw them out, make them stay—long languid days and short steamy nights, sultry heat rising up from the earth and misty humid mornings when the sun burns off the fog a few hours after dawn. Blue skies with red orange sunrises and pink purple sunsets— sweaty wet bodies that chill down in the breezes of an evening shower.

What’s not to love? I set some of my stories in the sultry heat of summer and use it to mirror the sensual heat developing between my hero and heroine. This mirroring technique is fun to do. The weather can play an important role in a story. You can use it as a backdrop for the heated emotions playing out between characters. Here's an example I wrote this morning.

...Yearning spread through her hotter than the sweltering medieval morning. She closed her eyes taking in the rousing heat of him. When she looked up, the blue in his eyes darkened. His damp body brushed so near, his fingers touched her, grazing across her lips. A breath caught on its way to her throat...
I may love summer, but some people don’t like hot steamy days and prefer chilly stormy fall, or the warmth of a waking spring, even the frigid cold of winter.

What is you best time of year? Does it have anything to do with how you create your stories? Do you ever use weather as a setting for character emotion or other plot elements in your stories?

You could share an example from your own work with us.

Kaye

Just Thinkin'

Here is a few interesting ideas from Writing Is A Verb by Bill O'Hanlon.

Science fiction author Ray Bradbury wrote, in Zen in the Art of Writing, “... [if I were] asked to name the most important items in a writer’s make-up, the things that shape his material and rush him along the road to where he wants to go, I could only warn him to look to his zest, to see his gusto.”

How do you find or connect with the gusto and zest—also known as the juice—that will fuel your writing through the book creation and publishing process? By identifying and connecting with one or more writing energies.

Writing Energies

Positive Energies. Writers can be blissed (excited or passionate about their subjects or the writing process itself) or blessed (encouraged by someone who believes in them or their writing abilities, or just in the right place at the right time).

When these positive energies are released, they can fuel a book or a lifetime of writing. Blissed is the excited, passionate love or fascination for some activity or subject. Some writers just love to write.

Others are fascinated with the subject of their writing. Some are obsessed with or taken over by characters or the research they do for the book. Blessed is the energy released when someone encourages you in your writing life or believes in your promise as a writer.

Another way to be blessed is to be in the right place at the right time. Blessed is meeting an editor or an agent unexpectedly. You might see something, read something, or hear something that gives you inspiration for a book project.

Of course, you can do some things to make your own luck (as the saying goes, “I’m a great believer in luck. I find that the harder I work, the luckier I get”). Call it serendipity or being blessed or working hard to get luckier. When it happens, it can sometimes release the writer in you.

Negative Energies. Writing can be like photography: You can use the negative to develop. For many writers, the energies that drive their work come from a negative motivation—they are so upset, angry, or unhappy that they feel compelled to express those emotions through writing. Or they want to prove someone wrong, or right some injustice in the world through their writing.

So what do you think about Bill's ideas?

How do you find your own writing energy?

Kaye